and she is asleep on the floor of our room!
We have had quite the roller coaster day. After 4 hours of sleep, we were picked up at 7 a.m. for the airport in Beijing. (The Beijing Airport is unlike anything we have seen, by the way.) We arrived in Jinan at 10:30, and went to the hotel. We were supposed to meet Micah in our hotel room at 2 pm, bu she was taking a nap. So at 3 pm, our room doorbell finally rang. In walks Ms. Zhou (foster mom) carrying Micah, Ms. Zhou's daughter, our facilitator/translator, the orphanage director, and one of the orphanage caretakers who took care of Micah for the first 15 months of her life. That is a lot of Chinese speaking adults in one small hotel room with a toddler. I tell you it was a circus!
Micah wanted nothing to do with us with all of the other wonderful Chinese people around to choose from. Who could blame her? The following 2 1/2 hours consisted of a lot of craziness: trying to get Micah to interact with us by playing peek-a-boo, giving her crackers, getting money exchanged (they didn't like the bills we brought so we will have to try again tomorrow at a different bank), getting "official" photos taken with our screaming child (they will be in frames for SURE!), asking questions about Micah's history through a translator, a lot of trying to hand over Micah to us followed by crying. What we really wanted was for everyone to just LEAVE and let us figure it out!
When they finally did, Micah was GREAT...for about 7 minutes. Then she realized the entourage wasn't coming back. Well folks...she lost it! I mean REALLY lost it! She was crying so hard she threw up all over me. It honestly broke my heart for her. We prayed and we sang, and she screamed. She didn't want to be put down, but she didn't want to be held. She was inconsolable for about an hour. Then she did the craziest thing. We were in the bathroom, I was holding her, and she was screaming. She grabbed my hand and put it on the hotel bathrobe hanging on a hook in there. I took the thing off the hook and handed it to her. She immediately put her thumb in her mouth, flopped over in my arms, and calmed down. The girl loves terry cloth! Who knew!
Well...I lost it then. I just felt so sorry for this poor little orphan girl who didn't know who to trust and didn't know if she would ever get to see the one person in the world she knew to be mama (Ms. Zhou). And I was really missing my other thumb sucker at home. It seems that Silas and little Miss M already have something in common! We laid her down on the floor, covered her in the robe, laid down beside her, rubbed her head, and she went promptly to sleep. She still is...on the floor...with her thumb in her mouth...clutching a huge robe. Lord, give us the grace and wisdom to give this little girl just what she needs!
We will try to post pictures in the next day or two. Thank you for praying for us!
Congratulations on having her in your arms. Thanks for sharing about this first day together, ours is today. Hopefully we'll see you next week.
ReplyDeleteashley (Rushton's friend)
Wow, El. So much strength required yesterday! Poor Micah, what a sad moment, but surely a small one when you consider the span of wonderful ahead that she will now enjoy with such a loving family. I am so glad Mrs. Zhou loved her so much. It's hard to know what to say (I've probably already put my foot in it somehow!) but just love you and Reed and praying for new mercies minute by minute!
ReplyDeleteHugs to you. We have been home now 18 months with our 2nd DD and you wouldn't believe it's the same child that we met in China. It's just so overwhelming for them. We look weird, smell weird, sound weird -- it's total overload for their sweet hearts.
ReplyDeleteYou are doing the right thing, don't give up. I will be praying for you and checking in on your blog.